Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!decvax!ucbvax!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut!slim
From: slim@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Slim Whitman)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Computer Animations
Message-ID: <5790@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 2 Feb 88 16:10:03 GMT
References: <957@luth.luth.se>
Organization: Computer Graphics Research Group
Lines: 27
Keywords: graphics companies, money, etc.

As a former member of Cranston Csuri, I may be able to answer some questions
regarding companies.  Digital Productions as well as Robert Abel was bought
by Omnibus and then all three went down the tubes last summer.  As far as I
know the only major companies left doing "commercial" animation are Pacific
Data Images and Fantastic Animation Machine ( there are plenty others that
are much smaller as well as larger ones outside the U.S. ).  

As well as I can tell, the primary reason Cranston Csuri went out of business 
was that they were top heavy ( too much management ).  The number of people 
actually doing animation or software production was about half of the actual
employees of the company.  In addition, except for network intro packages and
station image packages, each work was "custom" and therefore not a repeatable
product.  This led to reduced profits especially when one considers the number
of people involved on a project and the fact that advertising firms tend to
want significant modifications to the commercial. 

The above is my opinion and may not be true in every case.

Hope I could help.

		-scott whitman



-- 
 Scott Whitman, Department of Computer and Information Science
 The Ohio State University; 2036 Neil Ave. Columbus OH USA 43210-1277
 slim@ohio-state.{arpa,csnet} or ...!cbosgd!osu-cis!slim